Acpo is the new Parliament
May 15th, 2009Police forces are to stop monitoring hunts in a change of policy that sounds the death knell for the hunting ban, The Times has learnt.
New guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) states that gathering evidence of illegal hunting is difficult, that the ban is hard to enforce and that chief constables have more pressing priorities.
So, Acpo is the new Parliament. The lawmakers pass laws, and then Acpo decides which ones will, or will not be enforced according to their own… what exactly?
In future, forces should rely on anti-hunt activists to produce information, it says. But they should also be “very cautious” of such groups and recognise that hunting is an “emotionally charged” subject.
so they are outsourcing the policing of hunting to the most irrational, illogical, hysterical bunch of people in Britain, but, they should be cautious in doing it.
Pinch! Pinch! Pinch! Pinch!
yep, I am actually awake and not dreaming this!!
Hunts will also no longer be required to inform police in advance of the time and place of meets and their planned route.
This is absolutely amazing. By what permission are they able to essentially nullify a law? Why do they not nullify ALL the laws that are insane, like the absurd prohibition laws that no policeman agrees with. Wether you agree with the idea of a group of mass murdering nincompoops saying who can and cannot do what, it makes no sense if you BELIEVE in that system to say that after the process of making laws another, unelected body actually decides which laws are going to be enforced.
By the way, it is completely sensible that they are not policing this insanity. The police should not be telling people to put on their seat belts, should not be telling people what they can or cannot do on their own land (hunting) and should not be doing anything other than protecting physical people and property. They should not be sitting at the side of the road with speed radars, should not be running drink drive checkpoints, should not be in schools running magnetic arches.
You get the picture.
Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales and the Acpo spokesman on rural affairs, said: “Hunting is definitely not a policing priority. It is not illegal to wear a red coat and ride a horse in a public place.”
That isn’t funny!
The new guidance undermines one of the most controversial pieces of legislation introduced by the Labour Government, which took up 700 hours of parliamentary time.
Since the Hunting Act came into force in 2004, there have been eight prosecutions, of which only three have been successful, with one pending. Hunting has thrived.
Yay hunters and YAY property rights.
Mr Brunstrom said that police had to chose which areas of law enforcement to devote scarce resources to. He said: “If you look at hunting, the penalties do not include a prison sentence for offenders. This puts the Hunting Act to the lower rather than the higher end of offences. Parliament had the chance to include imprisonment as a sentence but did not do so.”
Thats odd… why should the level of sentence have anything to do with it? There are already too many people in prison; the idea that the potential sentence determines wether or not a crime is investigation worthy doesn’t make any sense. What is the ‘value’ of putting people in prison? In fact, it costs people money to keep them there, so surely this something to be avoided. It is not logical; if the police are only going after crimes that could result in a prison sentence, that means that all crimes that do not call for such a sentence are basically unenforced.
The new guidance is not binding but was unanimously approved by the country’s most senior officers this week. Officers are urged to avoid “acrimonious, time consuming, frustrating and ultimately fruitless activity”.
Wow, so that REALLY means that they should not be doing any prohibition style enforcement at all! ‘Drug’ busts are most certainly acrimonious, time consuming, frustrating and ultimately fruitless, because nothing they do can stem the tide of ‘drugs’ in the UK. The decades of the failed ‘war on drugs’ has proved that. You can get anything you want cheaper than ever, and growing mariguana (yes ‘mariguana’) is a cottage industry in the UK.
Just who are these ‘senior officers’, how often do they meet, how do they decide what they decide etc etc. The article says ‘unanimously’ so they voted on it… that makes it OK then right?!?!
Senior officers expressed concern that their neutrality had been compromised by being forced to release details of meets through freedom of information requests to activists who had gone on to disrupt hunts.
If they were not wasting their time and violating the rights of landowners, they would not be compromised in the first place. I guess that is not a problem anymore; just ignore the law.
More and more the message is clear; if something, some law, is wrong, simply ignore it. The MPs do it, the police do it. EVERYONE does it.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has made it clear that he favours a repeal of the Hunting Act and in the event of a general election victory will offer MPs a free vote in government time, although a backbencher would have to produce a Bill.
Hmmmmmm. That really is not good enough. If a law is wrong it should be REMOVED from the statute books. Imagine if there was a law saying that the penis of all newborns should be cut off. Cameron says, “I am aginst this, but I am going to allow a free vote on the matter”. No, that is NOT good enough at all, and in fact, all the things that need to be removed from the statute books, NIR, ID Cards, Biometric Passports, DNA Database for non criminals, cannot be left to a simple vote. Or at least they should not be.
Mr Brunstrom said: “I am pleased with the new guidance but hunting is definitely not a policing priority and don’t let me give you the impression it is. But that does not mean we are not going to deal with it. We recognise it is the law of the land and the duty of the police to enforce it — but to do so proportionately and according to priorities.”
That doesn’t make any sense; “We are going to enforce the law, but we are not.”
Mr Brunstrom said that forces needed a consistent approach in dealing with reports of unlawful hunting. He also raised concerns about militants becoming involved with anti-hunt organisations and said that police had to be cautious when people made complaints to them. He outlined the difficulties facing police. “If there are offences they are likely to be taking place in a remote rural environment. We are not very well equipped to follow hunts and get evidence and nor do we think we can justify it. Pursuing hunts is an expensive and sophisticated operation.”
The police are in an impossible position. They do not get paid enough money. They are asked to do things that any rational person would refuse to do. Every year there are more and more things they are asked to police, and they become more and more complicated. Take for instance computer ‘crime’. They have to open labs, get training in how to look at hard discs and then when they do it, they have to expose themselves to horrible things that would derange any sane man. For this, they get hated by everyone.
If the police had simpler roles of protecting property and people, then they would not have any of these problems… or at least they would be greatly reduced. They could allocate their resources correctly and efficiently, and the public would look upon them completely differently. But I digress. If the police are able to do this for Hunting, they should immediately do the same for prohibition, and most certainly, they should NEVER involve themselves in the complete nonsense that they have been getting mixed up with.
He accepted the need to train more police in hunt investigations and said he hoped that the pro-hunt Countryside Alliance and the RSPCA, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the League Against Cruel Sports would attend training seminars to give their views. A hunt investigation manual is to be distributed to forces before the autumn season.
A manual that no policeman has time to read, about a law no policeman has any inclination to enforce, and which is now moot.
The Countryside Alliance said: “We have always understood what a difficult job the police have in dealing with such a confusing piece of legislation. But the guidance suggests that the sort of engagement some police forces have had with animal rights groups should, quite rightly, be avoided.”
POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP! POOP!
That is the sound of Champagne bottles popping all over the west country!
A spokesman for the League Against Cruel Sport said: “We fought for 80 years for the hunting ban and, while we accept it is not a high priority for police, a ban was the will of Parliament and is the will of the people and we are going to press for more prosecution cases to be brought.”
[…]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6289896.ece
The ban is the will of SOME members of Parliament, is NOT the will of the people, and you wasted 80 years which would have been better spent keeping Britain sane.
I cannot begin to list all the nonsense that has happened in the UK over the last EIGHTY YEARS. Hunting over that time has been the VERY LEAST of Britain’s problems, and in fact, it is perfectly shameful that so much effort should be wasted on banning hunting while there are still people in Britain who CANNOT READ AND WRITE.
Of course the members of the League Against Cruel Sport can campaign for whatever they like, but thinking about it rationally, in the same way that the police are now forced to prioritize, any rational person would work to eliminate illiteracy in the UK before hunting. Perhaps if they worked for that instead of attacking hunting directly, they would have produced an electorate more disposed to banning hunting…or rejecting the idea as absurd on its face…who knows? One thing is for sure, humans come FIRST, ALWAYS, and FIRST where you live. That means eliminate poverty in your own country FIRST, then encourage other people to solve their problems by the example you set, and THEN you can think about ‘banning hunting’. Or not!